Who are KU's best passers to Ellis and Embiid?

KU's Joel Embiid has gotten plenty of help with passes from teammates.

One Bill Self quote stood out to me following Kansas' 86-64 victory over Georgetown last week.

"We need to play through our bigs," the KU coach said. "That’s the strength of our team."

Statistically speaking, Self is correct, but it also takes a bit more courage to say something like that this year with the potential No. 1 pick in Andrew Wiggins playing on the wing.

It's still hard to blame Self for wanting to go back to what has worked for his teams almost every season since he arrived 11 years ago.

That made me wonder, though. If Self truly does want to play through his bigs, who are the best players that allow him to do that?

For help with that question, I sifted through the play-by-play data to take a look at which KU players are the most frequent passers to the Jayhawks' premier big men inside: Perry Ellis and Joel Embiid.

Before we start, let's see how well you can do on your own.

Ellis has had 33 assisted baskets so far this season. How many of those do you believe were assisted by KU junior point guard Naadir Tharpe? And how many do you think were assisted by backup point guard Frank Mason?

Have your guesses in mind? OK, here are the results:

This was a shock to me, and it might show just how important experience is when running Self's offense.

Tharpe, who has three years with Self, has dished out 17 of the 33 assists to Ellis (52 percent).

Mason, meanwhile, has mustered just two assists to Ellis (6 percent), which is only half as many as 7-footer Joel Embiid has tossed to Ellis inside (four).

The assist numbers to Embiid aren't as drastic, but they show the same basic trend.

Tharpe (42.8 percent) once again easily has the highest percentage of passes to Embiid. Mason (17.9 percent) is in second place this time, but again, he lags quite a ways behind.

To be fair, Tharpe does have more minutes (292) than Mason (216), meaning we'd expect his assist numbers to be a little higher than his teammate. And Mason's assist numbers to Jamari Traylor and Tarik Black, KU's other two primary bigs, are closer to Tharpe than the two charts above.

But it looks like there's something else going on, especially because both players' numbers show them to be good passers this season (Tharpe ranks 113th and Mason 259th nationally in Ken Pomeroy's assist rate measure).

Let's take another step to break it down further. Here are the types of shots that Tharpe gets for teammates with his assists, broken down into four categories: layups, dunks, 2-point jumpshots and 3-point jumpshots.

As we can see, Tharpe does a great job of getting other players easy shots; 35 of his 50 assists (70 percent) have led to shots at the rim.

Now, here's how Mason's assists break down:

The large red section should stand out right away. While Tharpe is much better at getting teammates good looks inside, Mason's specialty has been hitting open players on the perimeter. Eleven of his 29 assists (37.9 percent) have been for 3-pointers, compared to just 22 percent for Tharpe*.

Meanwhile, 15 of Mason's 29 assists have gotten teammates shots at the rim (55.2 percent), a percentage that is a bit lower than Tharpe's 70 percent.

* — In case you're wondering, this 3-point assist difference doesn't appear to be caused by the fact that Tharpe is a better 3-point shooter than Mason. Mason has four 3-point assists to Tharpe this year, while Tharpe has three 3-point assists to Mason. In other words ... neither player has loaded up on 3-point assists to the other.

The sample size isn't huge, so we shouldn't make any grand conclusions. But while Tharpe and Mason both play the same position and have posted solid assist rates, these numbers indicate that they've come up with their assists in different ways.

Tharpe, with more experience, appears to be the better post passer, as he's been much more effective at getting the ball to KU's two starting post players in Ellis and Embiid.

Mason, meanwhile, appears to be more likely to find open teammates on the perimeter. This could be for a variety of reasons — his ability to drive opens up shooters on the perimeter; his inexperience makes him less confident to throw it inside; a small sample size — but again, so far his passing skill set appears to be different from Tharpe's.

Which brings us back to the original quote. If Self indeed wants to play through his bigs, the Ellis and Embiid charts above could indicate his best option — at least at this point — would be to continue to play Tharpe a majority of the minutes.

It might not be a coincidence that Self has gone back to Tharpe as his primary point guard in recent games, as the junior's passing strengths appear to be more in line with what this KU team needs most.

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JNew, this is flap out your best statistical exploration of the greatest game ever invented yet! It instantly switched on my thinking cap and made me want to respond. You approve triggering clicks does not have to be accomplished with pandering and negatives in the interactive era.

The thought you provoked is this: perhaps the different statistics for four and Mason reflect Self choosing different attack tactics with the different players abilities. Put another way, so has a strategy of probing defenses alternate ways. First, he brings Tharpe to probe a defense from the inside out with a big man. hence, Tharpe's statistics. Once the defense begins to overplay the bigs, I. E., fronting and doubling them, then he brings in Mason, the better penetrator, and tells him to penetrate and either get to the room in the creases created by the defense overplaying our Biggs, or by kicking out to our wings when the defense collapses on Mason.

In other words, what you are measuring may be the manifestations of Self's tactics both intentionally tailoring play to the differing strengths of his point guards, rather than just inabilities of these players.

Further, it follows logically that the proper order of substitution would be far first to get the opposing Biggs overplaying or Biggs, then Mason to exploit that overplaying. Perhaps this is why the experiment of starting Mason failed – it was strategically unsound in a series sense. Perhaps Mason is most effective after the big are overplaying.

...in the KU Buckets Forum, Tharpe is the better passer and Mason the better penetrator; not that Tharpe cannot penetrate, he definitely can, but he plays as Coach Self wants him to play, feeding the bigs inside. The graphs certainly validate this point.
With the new rules and the prevalence of zone defenses, Tharpe role will continue to increase. With man to man defenses, Mason will get increased playing time since he can penetrate and either score or draw the foul.

Do you have any way of determining how many of Tharpe's assists are coming from his PG play and from his Wing play on a per minute basis.

I have been baffled at how much Self has played Mason at point and Tharpe on a wing at the same time.

My hunch is that Tharpe is feeding the bigs when at point and he is feeding the bigs a lot when he is on the wing.

I suspect that Mason AND Selden and Wiggins are still kind of iffy on feeding the bigs.

The give away would be Selden's assists in the paint per minute played on the wing, compared to Tharpe's assists in the paint per minute played on the wing. I reckon Tharpe's number is sharply higher than Selden's.

And Greene, White and Frankamp have yet to show they can feed the post reliably, protect, guard and make shots.

Self is masking with Tharpe on the wing until some of his other players figure out how to give him the post feeds he needs from the wing.

There is no question that feeding the inside players is an art that takes a special player to truly master it. It requires complete knowledge of position and angles. A good pass results in the inside player catching the ball in the prefect position to score; a poor pass results in the ball being send back outside or worse yet a turnover.
Many players at KU have done well a the feeding the post; some like Morningstar did not even play PG but SG.
At this time Tharpe has more experience and is better getting the ball inside. Mason has not figure out the intricacies of feeding the ball inside and many time gets impatient and takes an ill advised long jumper. In time, he will learn the process, he has to since Coach Self wants the ball to go to the inside as part of his preferred high-low system.
You have heard of five tool player in baseball; in basketball a PG need also 5 tools:
1. Be able to run the offense.
2. Pass the ball inside.
3. Speed to penetrate.
4. Reliable shooting from outside.
5. Ability to rebound long balls.
At this point Mason can do 1, 3 and sometimes 5; however 2 and 4 are still very raw and needing a lot of work. To his credit, Mason readily admits his shortcomings; this is a good sign.